CODEWITHSUNDEEP
phpoop
Krystian Polska
Krystian Polska

Reputation: 1356

PHP setting property that doesn't exist in class works, why? how?

<?php

class ser {

    public $a;

}

$x = new ser;
$x->b = 10;

var_dump($x);

Something like this.

Class ser has only $a property, but we can set $b to new object of this class and it works despite this class doesn't have any $b property

output

E:\XAMPP\htdocs\fun\test2.php:12:
object(kurde)[1]
  public 'a' => null
  public 'b' => int 10

Why this works?

Why we can add property and set it to this class while it doesn't belong exactly to this class?

How is that possible and why is that possible?

Any purpose? Sense of making this possible?

Upvotes: 1

Views: 1040

Answers (1)

Scopey
Scopey

Reputation: 6319

This is what PHP refers to as "overloading". This is different to overloading in almost any other object oriented language.

If you do not like it, you can use the __set magic method to throw an exception if a non-existent property is set:

public function __set($name, $value) {
    throw new \Exception('Property "'.$name.'" does not exist')
}

You can tell from the comments on the documentation what the general consensus of this "feature" is.

Upvotes: 3

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